


What A Day It Has Been

by DizzyDrea



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-02
Updated: 2009-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-27 03:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DizzyDrea/pseuds/DizzyDrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been such a good morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What A Day It Has Been

**Author's Note:**

> I loved this show while it was on. I even have the DVDs to prove it. And like a lot of people, I was a Susan/Marcus shipper. I was devastated when Joe Straczynski killed him off. That's when I wrote this. It's languished on my hard drive for far too long, so it's time to let it out to play. Enjoy.
> 
> Disclaimer: Babylon 5 is the property of J. Michael Straczynski, Babylonian Productions, Synthetic Worlds Ltd, Warner Bros Television and a lot of other people who aren't me. I'm doing this for fun and for practice. Mostly for fun.

~o~

It had been such a good morning.

Commander Susan Ivanova sighed heavily.

She had remembered to set the coffee – or what passed for coffee in this part of the galaxy – so that she smelled it in her dreams before her alarm had even gone off that morning. She’d had a clean and freshly pressed uniform waiting in her closet. The material still itched sometimes, though she was more of an adult than Zach when it came to complaining about it. And there hadn’t been more than a dozen Babcom messages waiting for her when she woke up, mostly of the innocuous variety, and none from the more troublesome residents of the station. She hadn’t even seen Marcus yet, although she didn’t hold out much hope of escaping his terminal cheerfulness today.

And now, standing in C&C, Lt. Corwin was standing before her with some flimsies in his hand, a mixture of resignation and trepidation on his face.

Susan sighed again, not caring who heard her. It had been such a good morning.

In the hour and a half that it had taken her to ready for the day and make her way to C&C, all hell had broken loose on the station. There was a full-blown riot going on in Downbelow and no one seemed to know how it had started. As a result of the riot, no less than three power transfer grids were now offline. Unfortunately, these grids didn’t service Downbelow; they serviced the sections just uplevel, leaving hundreds of people without power. And the Drazi, it seemed, were getting antsy for a fight with the Shadows, but instead had decided to pick on the nearest neighbor without a fighting chance: the Brakiri.

“What were they thinking?” Susan muttered when she got to that part of the report.

“I think the point is that they weren’t, ma’am,” Corwin replied without thought.

Susan looked up at him, her characteristic scowl in place. Corwin immediately regretted his words, but before he could make some sort of apology, Susan had activated her link.

“Ivanova to Allen,” she spoke into the link on her hand.

“What is it, Commander, ‘cuz I’m kinda busy right now,” came Security Chief Zach Allen’s response.

“What’s going on down there?”

“Wish I knew, Commander,” Zach declared as he dodged another would-be attacker and threw a punch at his attacker’s companion that landed with a satisfying crunch on the man’s jaw.

“Maybe if you stopped playing around you might get to the bottom of this?” Susan suggested.

“I’ll give that a try,” Zach replied, an annoyed tone creeping into his voice. “I’ll get back to you if I find out anything.” Susan could hear him giving instructions to the men nearest him to move back to a safer distance just as he was disconnecting.

Well, so much for that problem. There wasn’t anything she could really do to fix it, and until security had Downbelow secure, the repair crews couldn’t get in to fix the damaged grids either.

Turning her attention back to the flimsy in her hand, she reread the report on the Drazi. This was a problem she could handle. Looking up from the report, her gaze searched the command deck until she had picked out the person she was looking for.

“Lt. Corwin, where is the Captain?”

The Lieutenant, still a little nervous around Commander Ivanova, nearly jumped out of his skin. He had quietly returned to his duty station while the commander had talked to Mr. Allen, hoping to go unnoticed for the rest of his shift. He turned quickly when his name was called and stood at attention, his legs barely holding him up.

When Susan looked up again and saw Corwin’s stance she frowned a bit. “Relax, Corwin, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Realizing that he was standing at rigid attention, he relaxed a bit and proceeded to answer her question. “The Captain isn’t back from Epsilon 3 yet, but I believe Ambassador Delenn is still in her quarters. Would you like me to contact her?”

“No, don’t bother her. I’ll handle this. If anyone needs me I’ll be in the War Room,” she called over her shoulder as she left C&C.

~o~

By the time Commander Ivanova hit the doors to the War Room, she had worked herself into a fury.

“Why today of all days?” she muttered to herself. “Why not tomorrow? I’m sure tomorrow morning would have started out just as crappy as every other morning. Why couldn’t they have ruined my day tomorrow?”

Though the room was nearly empty at this time of day, the few Minbari and humans in the room turned their heads towards the Commander, not sure if she was talking to them or not.

Standing in the center of the room, in front of the large conference table, hands balled into fists on her hips, Susan Ivanova looked fierce.

“Well, somebody get me the report on this Drazi thing!”

Everyone stopped dead in their tracks, afraid to move much less go near the commander. Ivanova hardly noticed. She was so caught up in her own thoughts that she didn’t even notice that no one had brought her the information she had asked for. She was about to yell at them again when a familiar voice at her side startled her into silence.

“I think you’ve frightened them, Susan”

“Marcus! You startled me. How dare you,” she accused Marcus Cole as she slapped his arm with the pile of flimsies he’d just handed her.

“I am at your service, milady,” he replied with a mock bow.

“What are you doing here anyway? I thought you’d be out trying to get yourself killed again,” Susan muttered as she shuffled through the information now in her hands.

“No,” he replied with a sigh, “no death defying missions today. I thought I’d check in with Delenn, though. Maybe she has something we’d both enjoy.”

“I doubt that,” Susan stated matter-of-factly. Reading the report she was holding, suddenly her face went red. “I don’t believe this! What do they think they’re doing?”

“What?”

“The Drazi are spoiling for a fight, and now it looks like they’ve got one. They attacked a trade convoy of the Brakiri. Then the Brakiri attacked a Drazi outpost in retaliation. Now the Drazi are preparing for a full out assault.”

“Well, the Drazi have always been bullies,” Marcus observed.

“Trouble is that when they get to bullying someone around, they don’t stop until they’ve ground their enemy into fine powder,” she returned. “This isn’t going to be pretty. Why didn’t I just stay in bed this morning,” she finally muttered.

“Come again?” Marcus looked at her with that almost-smile on his face.

“Never mind,” she told him. “Well, that’s it. They’ve totally ruined my day now. Lieutenant,” she barked at the nearest warm body, “send White Stars 7, 10 and 22 out to Drazi space. Tell them to stop this thing before it starts. Tell them they have my permission to blast the whole Drazi fleet into spacedust if they don’t cooperate. I will not have them ruin tomorrow too!” The young Lieutenant ran off to do the commander’s bidding, too afraid of what would happen to him if he didn’t do it fast enough.

“That’s why I fell in love with you, Susan,” Marcus stated enthusiastically. “You do know how to beat a man into submission.”

Her face turning pale, Susan turned around to face Marcus. “What did you just say?”

“Did I say that out loud?” Marcus returned in a small voice. Of the thousand or so things he could have said in that moment, he’d said the one thing he hadn’t meant to. And worse yet, she’d heard him loud and clear.

Susan sat down hard in the chair next to her. “How long?” she asked, staring ahead at the viewscreen but not really seeing anything.

Seeing no point in denying it any longer, Marcus decided to come clean. “A while now. I suppose I don’t really know when it began.”

Suddenly angry, she leaped out of her chair and rounded on Marcus. “Here we are in the middle of a war, with you trying your best to get yourself killed, and now you tell me you’re in love with me?”

Marcus started to sputter a reply when Susan abruptly turned and stormed out of the room. Heaving a rather large and heartfelt sigh, he slumped into the nearest chair to contemplate how long it would be before he could safely get himself killed.

~o~

Ambassador Delenn swept gracefully into the War Room, having just had the oddest encounter with Susan Ivanova. Seeing Marcus seated at the conference table, she decided to approach him to see if he knew what was wrong with the commander.

But as she approached him she noticed the slouch in his posture and the glassy-eyed stare he had leveled at the opposite side of the room.

“Marcus,” she called to him, hoping not to startle him too much. When he didn’t reply, she reached out her hand to touch his shoulder.

Marcus looked up and registered that he wasn’t alone in the room anymore. Affecting a bright smile, he stood and bowed in greeting to Delenn.

“Entil’zha, I didn’t hear you come in,” he told her in mock cheerfulness.

Eyeing him suspiciously she said, “Yes, I had noticed that.”

Delenn paused, weighing her next words. She suspected she knew why both Ivanova and Marcus were acting strangely all of a sudden. Deciding on a straightforward approach, she looked up at Marcus and asked the question on her mind.

“Marcus, do you know why Commander Ivanova is acting so strangely? I just ran into her in the corridor, literally I might add, and she was muttering something about today having started so good, but getting worse by the minute. Do you know what she is talking about?”

“Well, there’s this thing with the Drazi,” Marcus tried, hoping to divert Delenn’s attention from him.

“No, Marcus, I do not think that was it.”

Darn, she wasn’t cooperating, Marcus thought with exasperation.

Delenn continued, pacing in a slow circle around Marcus. “She also said something about ‘that man’ being infuriating. Was she talking about you?”

Shoulders slumping, Marcus saw that he wouldn’t be able to fool Delenn. “I said something I shouldn’t have said, and now I think she’s mad at me.”

Delenn returned to stand in front of Marcus, noting the defeated expression on his face. “What could be so bad that you would cause her to anger?”

Taking a deep breath, Marcus dove in. “I told her about my feelings for her. I got caught up in the moment. It just slipped out. She got angry, said something about there being a war on and about me wanting to get myself killed, then she just left.”

“And why didn’t you go after her?”

Marcus shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “There didn’t seem to be any point. She was angry, and I can’t say I blame her.”

“I see,” Delenn said, although she didn’t really.

“I don’t really think she wants to talk to me, not now, maybe not ever,” Marcus tried to sound rational, but all he really ended up sounding was defeated.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Delenn remarked.

Marcus looked at Delenn, curiosity reflected in his eyes. “What?”

“Marcus, she is afraid for you. We are only afraid for the ones we care about. Now,” Delenn continued as if she had never spoken, “I have work for you, if you are up to it.”

Marcus knew he would have to consider Delenn’s words later. Trying to attend to what she was saying now would be very difficult.

~o~

It had been three days since the incident in the War Room, and Susan still got angry every time she thought about it. How dare he say something like that to her. How dare he say it in the middle of a war! Didn’t he have any common sense?

Somewhere in the back of her mind a little voice reminded her that love required no common sense at all, whatsoever. She ignored it.

She had come to Earhardt’s tonight to drown her thoughts in Vodka and as much noise as she could find. So far it wasn’t working.

Noticing that the noise around her had dulled somewhat, Susan turned around from her place at the bar and noticed Delenn coming straight toward her. This struck Susan as not just unusual but downright bizarre. Delenn never came into this bar, or any other for that matter, so it was obvious she had come for a reason.

“I have decided to study this thing you humans call a bar,” she told Susan nonchalantly when she had reached her destination.

“All of a sudden,” Susan shot back sarcastically.

“Yes,” Delenn now sounded full of enthusiasm. “And I would like to start with what you are having.”

Susan motioned to the bartender and ordered another Vodka for Delenn. He returned just seconds later with the drink, eyeing Delenn skeptically before returning to the other end of the bar.

They drank in silence before Delenn spoke again. “I am also curious about another human custom.”

Here it comes, thought Susan. “Which one is it this time, Ambassador?”

Ignoring the annoyed tone in Susan’s voice, she went on. “I wish to know why humans go out of their way to avoid talking to the one person they need to have a conversation with.”

Susan nearly spit out a mouthful of Vodka all over Delenn. “Did Marcus send you over here?”

“No,” Delenn replied simply,

“Well, good, because I don’t want to talk to him. I hate him!” Susan muttered. “Why did he have to go and ruin a perfectly good…well why did he have to go and say that?!”

Delenn remained silent, seeing Ivanova’s need to let off some steam. When she finally stopped muttering, Delenn covered her hand with her own.

“Susan, you do not hate Marcus.”

“Yes, I believe I do,” Susan shot back.

“Hate is a strong word, Susan,” the ambassador told her young companion. “So is love. There is a fine line between the two. They are the same emotion, one filled with joy and the other with anger. If you truly hate him, what else might you feel?”

With that Delenn squeezed Susan’s hand and then swept from the room.

Susan sat in stunned silence for several minutes. It couldn’t be possible, could it? There was only one way to find out, Susan realized. With determination she slid off her barstool and strode from the room.

~o~

Commander Susan Ivanova rang the door chime on Marcus Cole’s quarters for the third time. By this point she was beginning to receive interested stares from some of the passers by. She could imagine what kinds of rumors would be floating around the station by breakfast, but she was determined to talk to Marcus.

Thinking he must be ignoring her, she reached to ring the door chime a fourth time when she spotted Stephen Franklin walking down the corridor.

Sizing up the situation immediately, he stopped in front of the doorway. “If you’re looking for Marcus, he’s not there.”

“Where is he?”

“He left this morning. Something about some information Delenn needed him to pick up. Said he’d be back in a couple of days.”

Susan’s anger, which she had kept under control until now, was back in full force. “How dare he do this to me!” she shouted at Stephen. “And to think I was coming here to talk to him!”

Susan turned on her heel and marched off, muttering about how if he survived this mission she was definitely going to kill him when he got back.

The good doctor let out a long whistle. “I don’t envy you, my friend,” he told Marcus’ door before he wandered off.

~o~

Susan Ivanova sat in her quarters with the lights off nursing a glass of Vodka. It had been three days since she had run into Delenn in the bar, and she had decided it was safer to drink in her quarters where no one could bother her. The trouble was that when she sat alone in her room, without the noise of the bar to distract her, she could think. And the only thing she could think about anymore was Marcus Cole.

She had come to the conclusion that she didn’t really hate Marcus. But she also realized that she still had some intense feelings where he was concerned. So if it wasn’t hate, what was it? She knew there was only one way to find out, but at the moment she was afraid that she really would kill him if she saw him.

Her door chime rang, momentarily breaking her out of her reverie. She ignored it and took another sip from her glass.

It rang again moments later. Whoever it was, she hoped they would go away.

When it rang again for the third time, Susan knew there was no avoiding the person on the other side of the door. “Come,” she called.

Her door swung open to reveal a shadowy figure standing in the hallway. He was silhouetted by the light of the corridor behind him so that Susan couldn’t see his features, but she knew instantly who it was. For a moment she was glad he was here. Then her heart did a funny thing and she got angry all over again.

“May I come in, Susan?”

“Yeah, sure, come on in,” she told him, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Bit dark in here, isn’t it? Mind if I turn on the lights?” When he didn’t receive an answer, he shrugged and spoke to the computer. “Lights on, 25% please.”

Slowly the lights came on until the room was illuminated in a soft glow. Marcus walked slowly across the room until he reached the chair next to Susan’s couch. It was all the farther he dared to go. Even in the dim light he could tell she was furious. He seated himself on the edge of the chair, hands clasped and dangling between his legs, and waited.

“Why did you go?” Susan’s direct question caught Marcus off guard. It wasn’t what he’d expected her to ask.

“It’s what I do, Susan.”

“Yeah, I know: You live for the One, you die for the One.”

“It was a simple courier mission to Minbar,” he tried again. This wasn’t going at all as he’d expected. He wasn’t sure if that was good or not.

“So you just drop this bomb on me and then run off to Minbar, just like that,” she spat angrily.

Marcus took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. She was angry, that was for sure. But at least she was talking, and he had to make sure she didn’t stop. “Susan, that isn’t how I would have liked to have told you, but now that you know, I’m glad. I have wanted to tell you for a long time, but the timing just hasn’t been right.”

She frowned at him from across the room. “And what makes now any better?”

“Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about telling you,” he continued, compassion filling his words. “When you’ve been having a rough time of it, the only thing I wanted to do was hold you and tell you everything would turn out right. But I could sense that you weren’t ready for that, so I held my tongue. It hasn’t been easy, but I believed it was the right thing for you.”

At his words, her anger melted away from her, but the intensity of her emotions remained. That scared her a little. How could she have such strong feelings and not know it? Lorien had told her once to start talking to her heart again. He’d said it was the only way she would know if there was anything or anyone worth loving in her world. But she had stubbornly refused. It was so much easier to just ignore her heart than to have to deal with this kind of confusion.

Marcus watched the emotions play across Susan’s face from his place across the room. Finally he couldn’t stand seeing her in this state any longer. Standing quietly, he slipped his cloak off his shoulders and left it draped across the chair. In just a few steps he was seated next to Susan on the couch.

She looked up into Marcus’ strong face. That she hadn’t realized he’d moved until she’d looked up to find him seated next to her was obvious from the look on her face. Marcus’ heart broke just a little at her expression. He reached out and took the glass of Vodka from Susan’s hands, now resting in her lap, and placed it on the coffee table in front of them.

Slowly, and with great tenderness, Marcus reached up to cup her face in his two strong hands. Susan leaned into him, suddenly feeling very tired.

“Susan,” Marcus called. He waited until she met his gaze to continue. “I love you with all my being. I have for a long time. I know that frightens you, but it’s how I feel.”

Susan shook her head a little. “I don’t do well with feelings, Marcus. I prefer facts. No gray areas, less headaches.”

“Then deal with this fact: I love you. That won’t change.”

Susan sighed and closed her eyes, rubbing her cheek against Marcus’ hand. She didn’t know if she could accept his feelings for her as fact, but the intensity in his gaze told her that he was serious.

Marcus leaned in closer to her and brushed her lips gently with his own. Susan’s sigh this time was more of contentment than confusion, and it emboldened him to try again. This time he claimed her lips fully, tasting her sweetness, filling his kiss with all the love he felt for her. Susan’s hands, which had been resting in her lap until now, came up to cover Marcus’, still holding her face in his own.

Marcus reluctantly broke the kiss, leaning his forehead against Susan’s, eyes still closed.

“Marcus, I know I feel something,” Susan began, leaning her head back and opening her eyes so she could look into his. “I just…it’s…I don’t know…” she sputtered to a halt.

Marcus placed a finger over her lips, then placed a gentle kiss where his finger had been. “You’ll say the words when you’re ready. Until then, I’ll just say it enough for the both of us.”

Susan’s sigh was no less heartfelt this time, but it was one of relief and not exasperation. He understood, she kept thinking in wonder. She didn’t think there had existed anyone remotely like Marcus in the universe, even though he was everything her imagination could have dreamed up when she was a child.

Leaning into him again, this time Susan took the lead. She slid her arms around Marcus’ neck, pulling him closer than he had been before. She claimed his lips with an intensity she didn’t know she possessed. She was vaguely aware of Marcus’ arms circling her waist. After long moments, intertwined in each other’s arms, they broke apart, almost as if they had planned it.

Looking deep into Marcus’ eyes, Susan could only see one thing: love. He made her feel cherished, something she didn’t even know she’d needed. She sighed again and leaned on Marcus’ shoulder.

“What was that for?” Marcus wanted to know.

“I’m tired,” Susan declared. In truth she was, but she’d been afraid that he would leave if she said so. Now that things were more settled, she didn’t mind so much.

“I could go,” he offered.

“Would you hold me tonight?” came Susan’s reply. It wasn’t pleading, but Marcus sensed her need just the same.

He stood from the couch and, taking both Susan’s hands in his own, pulled her up next to him. He dropped one hand, but kept the other secure in his grasp as he turned and headed for the bedroom.

They both stopped next to the bed and Marcus crawled onto it, Susan following him. They snuggled into one another, fully clothed, and Marcus pulled a blanket from the foot of the bed to cover them. When he’d settled it over the top of them, he looked down at Susan. She was already asleep. Kissing her brow, he settled deeper into the mattress and closed his eyes.

His heart swelled with all the love he felt for the woman he now held in his arms. No matter that they would not consummate their bond tonight. He knew that she cared and it was enough for now.

His mind wandered to what it would be like to wake up next to this woman in the morning. He chuckled a bit, thinking about the scene he would be in for.

Marcus sighed contentedly before he too drifted off to sleep. What a day it had been.

~Finis


End file.
